All posts tagged ‘imagery’

The United States’ Landsat Earth observing program is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. This program has allowed scientists from all over the world to observe landscape changes on a massive scale through detailed photography of the Earth’s surface. By 1972, when Landsat launched, satellite imagery had already proven an extremely valuable resource, but the use of this imagery to understand land features and their change still needed to be proven. As you can imagine, the world has changed a lot in the last 40 years; natural disasters, population increases, crop rotation and gradual climate change have all had a hand in reshaping the landscape. Landsat has been there recording every change in breath-taking detail, changing the way we view the world around us at a human scale rather then at an individual’s scale.

To celebrate this historic anniversary, NASA is offering the chance for six lucky members of the American public to receive a chronicle of Landsat images taken of a certain area. In other words, NASA is giving you the chance to nominate your local area as a place worth investigating, to see how the landscape has changed in 40 years. All you have to do is send NASA an e-mail and tell them about your local area and the possible landscape changes that you think would be worth viewing from space. Entries are due by June 6th, and the winners will be announced at a press conference on July 23, 2012, exactly 40 years after Landsat’s original launch.